"Star Wars" and the Anima Problem
In my first post on the "Star Wars" series (this may be my last--or maybe not! The subject is inexhaustible!) I was speculating on why Han and Luke undergo heroic journeys in the original trilogy, but Leia doesn't. At the time I thought it was *just* sexism. A little more thought on the topic has led me to the conclusion that it's not *just* sexism, but rather the fact that "Star Wars" is about the masculine psyche and that Leia is therefore an anima figure. The attempts of the subsequent heroines, i.e., Padme and Rey, to break free of the anima role is probably why I find them only partially satisfying heroines. Allow me to elaborate.
The concept of the anima is taken from Jungian analytical psychology. Jung's theory is that each person contains a contrasexual--that is, of the opposite sex--element in their psyche, so that men have an "anima," what we might call a man's "feminine side," and women have an "animus." Even a brief examination of world literature and film will give us anima figures in uncountable numbers; unfortunately, animus figures are harder to find--or rather, they abound in romance novels and "chick lit," but since even the most successful examples of the genre, such as the "Twilight" and "50 Shades" series, are mocked and marginalized by the mainstream literati, who seem to be convinced that they are providing a service to feminism and womankind by doing so, we don't have many clear examples of animus figures that we are willing to accept. Anima figures, however, are easy to come by, and Leia is a perfect example.
The thing to understand about the anima/animus is that it is both the repository for all our beliefs and all our fantasies about what the opposite sex should be, and our guide to the underworld of our subconscious. The anima/animus is thus simultaneously an incredibly attractive figure, and one who frightens and repels us as it tries to get us to confront our fears and inadequacies. Women will tend to experience their animus as controlling and bullying (*ahem* Edward and Christian *ahem*) and have to learn how to integrate their (often sensible) advice while also standing up to them; men will tend to experience their anima as alternately seductive and nagging, and have to learn how to heed their wisdom without running away or falling into cowardice.
Leia is thus the perfect anima figure for Luke and Han. For Luke, who never knew his mother and is nervous around women, she is warm and supportive, kissing his cheek before they jump across the deactivated bridge in "A New Hope," coming back for him after his near-fatal confrontation with Vader in "Empire," and supporting him when he goes to confront Vader in "Jedi." For Han, who needs a firmer hand, she is often sharply critical, pointing out his inadequacies and alternately pushing and seducing him towards accepting his responsibility to others and forcing him to stop thinking only of his own short-term gain. It is partly because of Leia, the perfect anima figure, that our two heroes, especially Han, are able to complete their heroic journeys.
This is not a criticism of the character of Leia, who was revolutionary for her time and still in my mind remains one of the best strong female roles in contemporary culture. True, Leia is not on a heroic journey in the same way Luke and Han are (of course, she *is* on a heroic journey in the sense that she is one of the leaders of the rebellion and her mission is to overthrow the Empire, and in quest of that goal she often acts heroically), as she both starts and ends the series pretty much perfect. Like Obi-Wan and Yoda, she is at times strong, wise, and maddening because her role in the story is not to be its center but to help its central hero towards completion. This is her function as the anima and it would be a perfectly respectable function if it were recognized as such and if our culture were full of equivalent animus figures who were also recognized and accepted as such. If, if, if...well, a person can dream, can't she?
This lack of equality and equivalence in male and female character has been noticed and decried, which of course is a good thing, but the problem is that many writers and filmmakers have been attempting to turn anima figures into true heroines, and thus far their attempts have, in my opinion, been only partly successful. The anima is not a "real" woman, but a part of the masculine psyche, and thus 1) burdened with the (inherently self-centered) needs and fantasies of the psyche that has created her, and 2) incapable of making her own, independent heroic journey, since she is not a self-sufficient, fully formed psyche, but rather a fragment of another's self.
This leads us to characters such as Padme and Rey. As with Leia, I am quite fond of both of them and think that they are significant steps forward in our culture's grand heroic journey towards the acceptance and integration of the feminine. The current delight over Rey and how she is the feminist heroine we've been waiting for all this time is probably justified. But that says more about how low the bar is than how high Rey can jump.
So, our heroines: Padme, for all her awesomeness (I loved the way she was surrounded by handmaidens and had doubles with whom she would exchange identities--it was ALMOST AS IF SHE LIVED IN A SOCIETY WITH LOTS OF WOMEN IN IT), is really just Anakin's anima figure, as can be seen as she transforms from a clever and powerful fighter/leader in the first movie to a fearful, tearful figure in the last one, a figure who, fittingly, dies for some mysterious reason at the same time as Anakin is undergoing his final transformation into Vader. Unlike Leia, Padme does undergo some amount of change, but it is change linked with the change of the psyche that generated her, not change as the result of her own heroic journey.
Rey is, at least so far, more of her own person than Padme (how things will pan out in later installments is yet to be determined). But she still isn't a fully-fledged heroine in the true sense of the word, not in my opinion. First of all, as others have already pointed out, she's "the girl" to the other (mainly male) characters in the movie. Furthermore (again, as others have already indicated), she (like Leia and Padme) is TOO perfect. She's a brilliant pilot and mechanic, which I'm willing to accept since she obviously spends most of her time messing around with various forms of transport, but she also so strong in the Force that she is able to figure out and master Jedi mind control on her first try, without ever apparently having seen it demonstrated before (I know Kylo Ren tries to use mind reading on her, but he doesn't do the trick of telling the person that they will do something, and having them repeat back the words and obey, which is what Rey does). She is so good with her new light saber that the first time she picks it up, she is able to fight off Kylo Ren, who admittedly is wounded, but either he's not nearly as good as he's supposed to be, or Rey is simply ridiculously good. Either way, for me that's a serious weakness in the story. The only other character we've seen with this kind of talent is Anakin/Vader, but in his case, the danger of his incredible talent was recognized from the beginning, and the entire prequel trilogy was taken up with his struggle not to let his abilities corrupt him. There's no suggestion of anything like that so far with Rey, which for me makes her rather...flat. So far there's been no sign that she needs to train and overcome her naivety and impetuousness the way Luke did, or that she needs to struggle against the pull of the Dark Side the way Anakin did. She's just...perfect already. She doesn't appear to be able to undergo a real heroic journey, because she's already sprung, fully formed, from her father/creator's head.
I suppose I shouldn't be too judgmental. This probably IS the best that we can do right now. But we shouldn't mistake the first steps on the path for actually becoming a true Jedi. The heroines of the "Star Wars" universe are a very welcome development. But they're just the beginning, not the end.
The concept of the anima is taken from Jungian analytical psychology. Jung's theory is that each person contains a contrasexual--that is, of the opposite sex--element in their psyche, so that men have an "anima," what we might call a man's "feminine side," and women have an "animus." Even a brief examination of world literature and film will give us anima figures in uncountable numbers; unfortunately, animus figures are harder to find--or rather, they abound in romance novels and "chick lit," but since even the most successful examples of the genre, such as the "Twilight" and "50 Shades" series, are mocked and marginalized by the mainstream literati, who seem to be convinced that they are providing a service to feminism and womankind by doing so, we don't have many clear examples of animus figures that we are willing to accept. Anima figures, however, are easy to come by, and Leia is a perfect example.
The thing to understand about the anima/animus is that it is both the repository for all our beliefs and all our fantasies about what the opposite sex should be, and our guide to the underworld of our subconscious. The anima/animus is thus simultaneously an incredibly attractive figure, and one who frightens and repels us as it tries to get us to confront our fears and inadequacies. Women will tend to experience their animus as controlling and bullying (*ahem* Edward and Christian *ahem*) and have to learn how to integrate their (often sensible) advice while also standing up to them; men will tend to experience their anima as alternately seductive and nagging, and have to learn how to heed their wisdom without running away or falling into cowardice.
Leia is thus the perfect anima figure for Luke and Han. For Luke, who never knew his mother and is nervous around women, she is warm and supportive, kissing his cheek before they jump across the deactivated bridge in "A New Hope," coming back for him after his near-fatal confrontation with Vader in "Empire," and supporting him when he goes to confront Vader in "Jedi." For Han, who needs a firmer hand, she is often sharply critical, pointing out his inadequacies and alternately pushing and seducing him towards accepting his responsibility to others and forcing him to stop thinking only of his own short-term gain. It is partly because of Leia, the perfect anima figure, that our two heroes, especially Han, are able to complete their heroic journeys.
This is not a criticism of the character of Leia, who was revolutionary for her time and still in my mind remains one of the best strong female roles in contemporary culture. True, Leia is not on a heroic journey in the same way Luke and Han are (of course, she *is* on a heroic journey in the sense that she is one of the leaders of the rebellion and her mission is to overthrow the Empire, and in quest of that goal she often acts heroically), as she both starts and ends the series pretty much perfect. Like Obi-Wan and Yoda, she is at times strong, wise, and maddening because her role in the story is not to be its center but to help its central hero towards completion. This is her function as the anima and it would be a perfectly respectable function if it were recognized as such and if our culture were full of equivalent animus figures who were also recognized and accepted as such. If, if, if...well, a person can dream, can't she?
This lack of equality and equivalence in male and female character has been noticed and decried, which of course is a good thing, but the problem is that many writers and filmmakers have been attempting to turn anima figures into true heroines, and thus far their attempts have, in my opinion, been only partly successful. The anima is not a "real" woman, but a part of the masculine psyche, and thus 1) burdened with the (inherently self-centered) needs and fantasies of the psyche that has created her, and 2) incapable of making her own, independent heroic journey, since she is not a self-sufficient, fully formed psyche, but rather a fragment of another's self.
This leads us to characters such as Padme and Rey. As with Leia, I am quite fond of both of them and think that they are significant steps forward in our culture's grand heroic journey towards the acceptance and integration of the feminine. The current delight over Rey and how she is the feminist heroine we've been waiting for all this time is probably justified. But that says more about how low the bar is than how high Rey can jump.
So, our heroines: Padme, for all her awesomeness (I loved the way she was surrounded by handmaidens and had doubles with whom she would exchange identities--it was ALMOST AS IF SHE LIVED IN A SOCIETY WITH LOTS OF WOMEN IN IT), is really just Anakin's anima figure, as can be seen as she transforms from a clever and powerful fighter/leader in the first movie to a fearful, tearful figure in the last one, a figure who, fittingly, dies for some mysterious reason at the same time as Anakin is undergoing his final transformation into Vader. Unlike Leia, Padme does undergo some amount of change, but it is change linked with the change of the psyche that generated her, not change as the result of her own heroic journey.
Rey is, at least so far, more of her own person than Padme (how things will pan out in later installments is yet to be determined). But she still isn't a fully-fledged heroine in the true sense of the word, not in my opinion. First of all, as others have already pointed out, she's "the girl" to the other (mainly male) characters in the movie. Furthermore (again, as others have already indicated), she (like Leia and Padme) is TOO perfect. She's a brilliant pilot and mechanic, which I'm willing to accept since she obviously spends most of her time messing around with various forms of transport, but she also so strong in the Force that she is able to figure out and master Jedi mind control on her first try, without ever apparently having seen it demonstrated before (I know Kylo Ren tries to use mind reading on her, but he doesn't do the trick of telling the person that they will do something, and having them repeat back the words and obey, which is what Rey does). She is so good with her new light saber that the first time she picks it up, she is able to fight off Kylo Ren, who admittedly is wounded, but either he's not nearly as good as he's supposed to be, or Rey is simply ridiculously good. Either way, for me that's a serious weakness in the story. The only other character we've seen with this kind of talent is Anakin/Vader, but in his case, the danger of his incredible talent was recognized from the beginning, and the entire prequel trilogy was taken up with his struggle not to let his abilities corrupt him. There's no suggestion of anything like that so far with Rey, which for me makes her rather...flat. So far there's been no sign that she needs to train and overcome her naivety and impetuousness the way Luke did, or that she needs to struggle against the pull of the Dark Side the way Anakin did. She's just...perfect already. She doesn't appear to be able to undergo a real heroic journey, because she's already sprung, fully formed, from her father/creator's head.
I suppose I shouldn't be too judgmental. This probably IS the best that we can do right now. But we shouldn't mistake the first steps on the path for actually becoming a true Jedi. The heroines of the "Star Wars" universe are a very welcome development. But they're just the beginning, not the end.
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